Modern consumer and industrial packaging often includes reinforcing tapes or tear tapes as part of their construction. Various tape dispensers have been devised to dispense such tapes into corrugator and packaging equipment.
One such dispenser in disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,917,327 to Asbury et al. The '327 application discloses a system for automatically splicing together the trailing end portion of a spool, or roll, of tape to the leading end portion of a new spool of tape without interrupting the dispensing process. To prevent the tape from breaking under the strain caused by the inertia of the new spool of tape (which is initially at rest), the tape path is provided with a tension-control mechanism. In response to an increase in tension in the tape, the tension-control mechanism moves to shorten the length of the tape path, thereby relieving the increased tension in the tape. As the new spool comes up to speed, the tension-control mechanism, under the influence of a biasing mechanism, returns to its initial position to increase the path of the tape length. An active brake assembly prevents the new spool from unduly accelerating in response to the lengthening of the tape path by the tension-control mechanism.
Despite the previous systems, there is a continuing need for new and improved systems for dispensing tape. For example, the productivity of downstream equipment (e.g., corrugator and packaging equipment) that receives tape from a dispensing system depends in part on the rate at which the dispensing system can dispense the tape. Hence, there is a particular need for dispensing systems that allows for splicing at dispensing rates greater than heretofore possible.